Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
- No matter how good we humans have made something, chances are nature did it better millions of years ago.
- Rather than compete, it’s often better to tap into the natural version – and that’s exactly what scientists have done with the
- Smellicopter, a drone that uses an antenna from a live moth to sniff out its targets
SMELLICOPTER
- Researchers at the University of Washington and the University of Maryland have developed an autonomous drone that uses live antennae from a moth to smell and avoid obstacles as it travels in the air.
- The “smellicopter” was developed in association with the Air Force Center of Excellence on Nature-Inspired Flight Technologies and Ideas (NIFTI), and uses antennae from the Manduca sexta hawkmoth.
MANDUCA SEXTA
- Commonly known as the Carolina sphinx moth and the tobacco hawk moth (as adults) and the tobacco hornworm and the goliath worm (as larvae)
- Moths can use their antennae to sense chemicals in the environment.
PROCEDURE TO GET LIVE ANTENNAE
- The researchers used antennae from the Manduca sexta hawkmoth.
- They placed live moths in the fridge to anaesthetise them before removing an antenna.
- Once separated from the moth, the antenna remains biologically and chemically active for up to four hours.
WHY LIVE SENSOR INSTEAD OF ARTIFICIAL SENSOR?
- The antenna was wired into a circuit, so that the researchers could measure the average signal from its cells.
- They compared it to a typical human-made sensor by placing both in a wind tunnel and wafting various smells into the tunnel.
- The antenna reacted and recovered more quickly than the conventional sensor.
- Moreover, “Moth antennae are small, lightweight, and low-powered.
WORKING OF SMELLICOPTER
- The Smellicopter was driven by an algorithm that mimicked how moths search for smells of interest.
- The drone starts off by drifting to the left for a set distance, and if it doesn’t detect a strong enough scent, it then moves to the right for a while.
- When it detects a smell, the drone will then fly towards it. If at any point those infrared sensors pick up an obstacle within 20 cm (8 in), the Smellicopter will change direction.
- “So if Smellicopter was casting left and now there’s an obstacle on the left, it’ll switch to casting right,” “And if Smellicopter smells an odor but there’s an obstacle in front of it, it’s going to continue casting left or right until it’s able to surge forward when there’s not an obstacle in its path.”
APPLICATIONS OF SMELLICOPTER
- Search-and-rescue : It is an application where police currently use sniffer dogs rather than man-made odor sensors to find trapped persons.
- If we were able to use a tiny drone, or a swarm of tiny drones, to find these trapped persons instead, we would be able to locate them faster and keep the search dogs and rescue workers out of harm’s way.
OTHER APPLICATIONS OF SMELLICOPTER
- The device could be useful for seeking out plumes of scent, such as chemical signatures from explosives or the breath of people trapped in problem.
- That way, the drones could help in situations where it may be dangerous to send humans to investigate
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